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Research spending is dear to British hearts

British Prime Minister Tony Blair put research firmly on the EU agenda days before the UK was to take the chair of the Council of Ministers. Speaking to the European Parliament on June 23, he painted a bleak picture of the EU economy: “What type of social model is it … that is allowing more science graduates to be produced by India than by Europe, and that, on any relative index of a modern economy – skills, research and development, patents, IT – is going down not up?”

Blair’s words came days after the European summit failed to make headway on agreeing the EU budget for 2007-13. The European Commission’s proposal wanted to increase EU funding overall and double the current budget for research. This rate of increase is smaller than the world’s booming economies: India is planning to expand its biotechnology sector five-fold in the next five years and China has already trebled its spending on R&D since 2000.

Blair contrasted the EU’s spending on agriculture with that on R&D in order to argue his case for modernisation.

The prime minister told the British parliament that the EU spent seven times as much on agriculture as on research and development, science, technology, education and support for innovation combined.

Paul Hofheinz, president of the Brussels-based think-tank, the Lisbon Council, says Blair has also focused some much-needed attention on how to make Europe competitive.

“Even if he does not win this debate he will have done us all a tremendous service by provoking it,” he said. “This is a very good discussion to be having right now…”

Hofheinz says Blair’s mention of the Sapir Report – a July 2003 Commission study on how the EU should spend its budget to promote economic growth – has created more discussion on the report’s recommendations than it received when it was first released two years ago. “A lot of people are interested. What Blair has done is say this may be the way out. People are looking very closely at this wondering if in fact this is the way out,” he said.

The UK presidency will hold a conference in October on increasing access to risk capital.

The Commission has suggested that it would like to find ways to encourage different types of entrepreneurs – older people, women and ethnic minorities – to start businesses.

More prosaically, the UK presidency must advance further discussion of the 7th Framework Programme for research, in the hope of reaching an agreement with the European Parliament.